Another One Bites the Dust (4)

"A judge, wisely admonishing a defendant,' 'The last time I saw you, I told you I didn't want to ever see you again.'

'I told that to the prosecutor, your honour, but he didn't believe me,' replied the defendant."

"Character assassination is the deliberate destruction of an individual’s reputation," Wulandari carried on. "It is done intentionally to take certain advantage, and most notable targets or victims of character assassination are political leaders, officials, celebrities, scientists, athletes, and other public figures. Character assassins target the private lives, behavior, values, and identity of their victims. Biographical details are altered or fabricated. Intimate features are made public. Achievements are questioned. Good intentions are doubted. Using exaggerations, mockery, allegations, insinuations, and lies, the attackers try to damage the victim’s moral standing in the eye of the public; also, they try to elicit a negative emotional response from the public toward the victim.

What role does character play in democracy? In general terms, democracy is a form of government that relies on the consent of the governed. As Abraham Lincoln famously described in the Gettysburg Address, it is a form of government 'of the people, for the people, and by the people.' Of course, most democracies are not what we would call 'direct democracies' like ancient Athens. Unsurprisingly, this is a costly and slow way of making laws. It is far more common for democracies to operate representatively—citizens elect representatives to represent them in a council, congress, or parliament. It is these representatives who participate in deliberations about governing the country. Representative democracy is a system in which elected individuals represent groups of people. Under this system, the ways people perceive their representatives may influence how they view policies.

Democracies can be organized in many different ways. Many Western countries, including the United States, are republics led by an elected president. Others, such as the United Kingdom and Sweden, are constitutional monarchies where a king or queen is the symbolic head of state, but actual political power resides with the prime minister, who is the elected head of government. Some countries have a two-party system. Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and many Western countries have a parliament consisting of multiple political parties. These countries tend to be governed by coalitions. The Netherlands, for instance, often has more than ten different parties represented in its parliament! Despite such national differences, there are a number of characteristics of democracies that tend to support the general idea of a form of government that relies on the participation and consent of the governed. Democracies lie along a continuum. Some are strongly and more fully democratic, striving to heed the will of the majority, while protecting minority rights, and others exemplify only some elements of democratic governance.

Communication is central in democratic governments in general. It is not just citizens that need to have freedom of speech to dissent against the government and the freedom to vote for the political party of their choice, however. Democratic principles enshrine a robust press and media system as a check on governmental power as well. Thus, democracies are best when there is a spirited debate among politicians, citizens, and members of the media about what effective policy, priorities, and principles should be.

How do citizens in democratic societies make decisions about who to vote for? Ideology, party affiliation, problems, and issues—they all matter. But the individual character of those who represent people in public offices is very important too. We often think about political candidates as being 'the kind of people' who think like us, to whom we would compare ourselves, or whom we trust. So, trustworthiness, character, and authenticity are key components of democratic politics.

Character can be notoriously challenging to define, but stable traits that make an individual who they are and are understood in terms of being 'good' or 'bad' can be referred. It makes sense, then, why character would be important in a democratic government. Although this may be changing, most people prefer to elect someone to govern them who they trust to represent their interest and to be a good person. Of course, how people come to see a political candidate as having a strong and trustworthy character varies a great deal. Trustworthiness is the quality of being viewed as reliable, honest, and dependable. When people see a public figure as a person 'does what he says,' this is a good sign of trustworthiness and most likely, people’s support during elections. Authenticity encompasses some of the elements of trustworthiness and can loosely be defined as a political character that entails honesty, integrity, and transparency. In short, do the political candidates seem to be who they say they are? One of the reasons that we know authenticity is important for political candidates is the frequency with which it is used in character attacks.

There are seven core elements of democracy that can be mentioned: the ability of any adult citizen to run for office if desired; free and fair elections where citizens can choose among at least two candidates or parties; the freedom of dissent for those who disagree with the ruling party; protection of human rights, especially for those in the political minority; freedom of the news media and press to challenge and critique those in power; a vibrant civil society where citizens can organize and form groups to enact political change; a culture of public communication for citizens to debate and deliberate.

Character assassination is a feature of the democratic process. Because impressions of character are often central to how people make decisions about who to vote for in representative democracies, character becomes an important avenue of attack from political or ideological opponents. For example, vicious character attacks against presidential candidates are as old as democratic electoral campaigns themselves.

As you already know, character assassination is not limited to personal insults or cheap shots. For centuries, character attacks in democratic elections have also involved deliberate misquoting, gross exaggerations, anonymous lies, accusations of immorality, conspiracy rumors, falsifications, or even vandalism against presidents’ images.

Character attacks can also mobilize the base of the attacking side. They may appear unpleasant, wrong, and even disgusting in the eyes of many, but if tailored to people already opposed to a candidate, they can work.

A candidate’s origin, gender, social status, religious or professional affiliation, and private life are easy themes of character attacks. Using an attack to exploit a candidate’s family issues, past relationships, or behavioral traits including mental health could be effective too. Almost all president candidates experienced plenty of such attacks. A few people here, a few people there . . . A sliver of doubt in an unsure supporter or an undecided voter, caused by a character attack, may affect these individuals’ voting preferences and intentions. Even the smallest decline of public support for a candidate or increase of support for another one makes character attacks successful.

Because elections in democracies are often highly partisan, they attract a great deal of media coverage, and as a result, the media become a key component of how character assassination plays out on democracies. While we have already discussed some features of the media that relate to character assassination, it is worth thinking a little bit more about how these relate to democratic government.

For one, the media have been conceived of as a check on the power of politicians and elected officials.

Thus, the media and the press exist to balance the power of the government and to make citizens aware of things they may not be able to independently verify. This means that the press often discovers when officials are lying, cheating, or engaged in other activities that do not serve the public. Indeed, as rhetoric scholar Shawn J. Parry-Giles explains in her study of how the media covered Hillary Clinton, the media are often the arbiter of which candidates are seen as authentic and likeable. This is because we often operate from the assumption that politicians are not trustworthy, so the media set out to find examples of the inauthentic.

Again, because elections are such a prominent part of democratic politics, the media cover them closely. This often results in horse race coverage. It is defined as media coverage that focuses solely on who is winning or losing based on particular opinion polls, to the detriment, its critics say, of devoting time and column inches on 'the real issues'. This coverage defines politics as a game, and talks about campaigning in the metaphor of sports, seeking evidence that, just like in a horse race, one candidate has nudged slightly ahead of another.

One characteristic of character assassination in a democracy, is that the resources to respond are relatively evenly distributed throughout society. Differences in resources, power, and access to the media, varies when considering the targets of attacks. Certainly, these differences matter. But compare democracies with a relatively open and free press and with scant restrictions on online discourse to places like China and Russia, where most of the media is state controlled.

Then how about the character assassination in Authoritarian regimes? As an illustration, Eric B. Shiraev, Jennifer Keohane, Martijn Icks, dan Sergei A. Samoilenko, in their academic discussion, tell us about Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China. He has cultivated the image of a benign, caring leader, branding himself to the Chinese people as 'Uncle Xi' [president of the never never land call him 'big elder brother']. He was not amused when memes started circulating online comparing him to Winnie the Pooh, the friendly teddy and funny bear character created by novelist A.A. Milne and popularized in Disney cartoons. The first of these memes appeared in 2013. It juxtaposed a picture of President Xi walking alongside U.S. President Obama with a drawing of the Disney characters Winnie the Pooh and Tigger walking together—obviously poking fun at Xi’s stocky build next to Obama’s slender frame. Other memes comparing Xi to the fictional bear would soon follow. They were not necessarily meant to mock the Chinese president. Given Pooh’s sweet nature, it is possible that the images were shared by Chinese people to express their affection for 'Uncle Xi' in a lighthearted way. However, that was not the view taken by the regime. According to the website Global Risk Insights, the Chinese government regarded the Pooh memes as 'a serious effort to undermine the dignity of the presidential office and Xi himself'. The government took measures to put a stop to the online trend. Chinese websites censored images of Pooh and the teddy bear’s name no longer rendered any results in Chinese search engines. In fact, China’s most censored picture of 2015 was apparently an image of Xi standing upright in a car during a military parade, juxtaposed with an image of Pooh driving a toy car.

This case shows how intolerant autocratic leaders can be about any perceived slights to their public image, regardless of how trivial these snubs may appear. It also shows the enormous resources at the disposal of authoritarian regimes to combat perceived character attacks.

A political system in which individual freedom is subordinate to the power or authority of the state is called authoritarianism. Political leaders in authoritarian governments typically rely on a relatively small inner circle and impose their decisions on the population. They also use bureaucratic institutions to impose their policies. Such institutions under authoritarian power typically lack transparency and accountability. Democracy is a dynamic continuum, and no democratic society resembles another, neither in history nor today. Similarly, authoritarianism is not a dichotomy (i.e. a society is either authoritarian or it is not). It is a continuum, so that some countries or political systems can actually be more authoritarian than others. Authoritarianism also evolves over time and a country can become either more or less authoritarian. South Korea, for example, over the past four decades has gradually replaced its authoritarian institutions and policies with more democratic ones. Russia, on the contrary, in the 21st century is becoming increasingly authoritarian after a period of relative democratization.

Authoritarianism, despite its variety of forms, has several common features relevant to our study of reputation and character attacks. To begin, authoritarian governments usually weaken or even ban viable opposition parties and groups. The People’s Republic of China, for example, bans all political parties, except the ruling one. Other governments, like Russia, allow political parties but do not let them gain power. Authoritarianism is also hostile to transparent and free elections. Although authoritarian governments allow elections these days, they are hardly transparent and certainly unfree because of the government’s control of the media, intimidation of the opposition, and interference in the electoral process. Authoritarian governments limit criticism coming from oppositional voices, yet they facilitate social and political groups in support of the regime. Authoritarian governments do not allow independent court systems and limit people’s major civil rights, like the right to speak, for promises of stability and security. Moreover, authoritarianism—and this is especially important for our discussion—does not tolerate independent media.

In authoritarian systems, speaking simply, governing political establishments create two systems of rules: one for themselves and the other one for the rest of society. Mass media, social networks, and other forms of mass communication in such systems are under the government’s control, which decides what information is allowed to be posted or broadcast (this function of the government is called 'gatekeeping') and how to interpret information (this is called “framing,”). In other words, public discussions, criticisms, and character attacks in the media are usually allowed yet they are heavily regulated to benefit the government.

Autocracy is somewhat different from authoritarianism. Autocracy stands for a political system in which a sole person or a small group of people posess most political power and impose their will on others within a country’s political, social, or economic spheres. Autocratic leaders and their governments tend to be profoundly intolerant toward criticisms. Although authoritarianism and autocracy have several characteristics in common, it is important to make a distinction between them. For example, in authoritarian systems, top leaders are in most cases expected to be autocratic because they are the instruments of authoritarian power. However, a democratic leader can appear and even survive in an authoritarian system. Usually, the term authoritarian to refer to the system, and the term autocratic to describe individuals.

Authoritarianism tends to embrace autocratic leadership, and autocratic leaders thrive in authoritarian systems. Individual character features of political leaders thus become obvious targets of attacks from foreign and domestic critics. The leader’s individual characteristics appear to play a more significant role in authoritarian than in democratic (nonauthoritarian) political systems.

Leaders in authoritarian systems tend to be less concerned about public opinion than leaders in democracies. After all, the former (at least most of them) do not have to worry about winning elections. Nevertheless, as we have seen in the case of President Xi, leaders in authoritarian countries often make great efforts to maintain a positive image of their character in the eyes of the public. Many authoritarian regimes have built personality cults around their leaders. A personality cult is a system of informal practices and formal policies to deliberately present a leader as having exceptionally positive qualities. The 'good character' of the leader is advertised far and wide to generate loyalty, admiration, and respect. The opposition, of course, questions and attacks such 'good characters' using all means available to them despite censorship. In short, personality cults, just by their nature, tend to create a favorable environment for character attacks.

Autocratic leaders in authoritarian systems have a wide range of actions available to them to weaken and even eliminate their opponents without facing many, if any, legal or political obstacles. However, their power is not limitless. Besides, most leaders care about the legitimacy of their actions. Therefore, character attacks often become effective tools of their politics. Such attacks can directly target certain individuals. They can be launched by the means of silencing and censorship. They also can be organized in the form of show trials and other public events designed to blame and shame the opponent.

Authoritarian political systems have successfully used character assassination as a policy tool. Leaders could directly benefit from such attacks, which can weaken and disarm their opponents morally and psychologically. Moreover, these attacks can mobilize public opinion to rally around the establishment and to scapegoat the target of attacks. Next, the physical elimination of the opponent becomes easier to accomplish.

Since autocratic leaders are often the focus of personality cults, they tend to have a strong presence in the public sphere in the form of statues, monuments, and billboards. Not surprisingly, critics and opponents often vandalize such omnipresent symbols of a leader’s power. If the leader is firmly entrenched, this tends to happen secretly, often at night.

Vandalizing or removing statues of autocratic leaders does not always happen in an uncontrolled, emotionally driven frenzy. It is also possible for a new regime to dispense with the images of a previous leader in a well-organized, systematic manner."

“Death solves all problems—no man, no problem.” Wulandari was about to wrap up the discussion. "The phrase was invented by a famous Soviet anti-Stalinist writer Anatoly Rybakov, the author of The Children of Arbat. This infamous phrase has become a powerful reminder about politics’ lethal edges. Character assassination does not require direct physical destruction. One devastates or demolishes someone’s reputation instead. Yet by destroying a person’s reputation, another goal is achieved. 'Kill one’s reputation, kill one’s cause.'

Living in the 21st century, we have undoubtedly witnessed many instances of character assassination—on television, online, or in our daily personal encounters. At times, it may seem that fake news, vicious campaign ads, and insulting tweets are growing more frequent and fiercer in nature every year. Think of this—perhaps you have even been a target yourself. Without doubt, the rise of the Internet and social media has been conducive to practices of character assassination, while political polarization is probably a stimulating factor as well. However, the current situation is not unique. As history shows, personal attacks against Roman senators or 19th-century American presidents could be just as vicious, manipulative, and devastating as any allegation, tweet, or meme you may encounter today. At the same time, the 21st-century mass media environment provides opportunities for character assassination that our ancestors could only dream of. In these circumstances, it is important to develop a keen sense of media savviness. If you learn how character attacks function and what character attackers aim to achieve, you are more likely to recognize them for what they are and less likely to fall under their venomous spell. And Allah knows best."

"Dawn is coming" yet it was not necessarily "Winter is coming". Wulandari moved towards the other hemisphere, while humming,

Perfume came naturally from Paris,

for cars she couldn't care less, fastidious and precise

She's a Killer Queen

Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam

Guaranteed to blow your mind, anytime *)

Citations & References:

- Eric B. Shiraev, Jennifer Keohane, Martijn Icks, and Sergei A. Samoilenko, Character Assassination and Reputation

Management: Theory and Applications, 2022, Routledge

- Eric B. Shiraev, Jennifer Keohane, Martijn Icks, and Sergei A. Samoilenko,, Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, 2020, Routledge

- Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev (ed.), Character Assassination throughout the Ages, 2014, Palgrave

- Dr. Myles Munroe, The Power of Character in Leadership: How Values, Morals, Ethics, and Principles Affect Leaders, 2014, Whitaker House

*) "Killer Queen" written by Freddie Mercury

[Session 3]

[Session 1]

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