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2nd Edition

Character Assassination Across the Ages Revised and Expanded Edition with New Theory, Chapters, and Cases

Edited By Martijn Icks, Eric B. Shiraev Copyright 2026

316 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

Description

Character assassination—the deliberate destruction of an individual’s reputation—has been a persistent feature of public life across time and cultures. This revised and expanded edition offers a comprehensive investigation into how reputations are attacked, damaged, and destroyed, with case studies ranging from ancient Rome to the present-day United States. Political and religious leaders,... Read more

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

Introduction

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

1 Character Assassination: Bridging Psychology and History

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 ‘Sex 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

Reflections: Ancient Rome

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

The Middle Ages

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

Kenneth Baxter Wolf

6 Louis of Orléans, Isabeau of Bavaria, and the Burgundian Propaganda Machine, 1392-1407

Tracy Adams

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

Gilles Lecuppre

Reflections: Medieval Cases

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

The Early Modern Age

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

Bobbi Dykema

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

Mette Harder

10 “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

Reflections: Early Modern Cases

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

The Modern Age

11 Character Attacks and American Presidents

Eric Shiraev and Jason Smart

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

Zi Yang and Eric Shiraev

13 Propaganda and Resistance: The Failed Character Assassination of Václav Havel in Communist Media

Martina Klicperová-Baker

14 Women’s Libbers and Lesbians: Character Assassination in the Phyllis Schlafly Report

Jennifer Keohane

15 Political Cartoons as a Medium for Persuasive Attack: The Case of Governor Noem the Puppy Killer

William L. Benoit and Sergei A. Samoilenko

Reflections: Modern Cases

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

Epilogue

Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev

Index

Editor(s)

Biography

Martijn Icks is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (2011). Additionally, he has co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management (2020) and co-authored Character Assassination and Reputation Management (2022), also published by Routledge.

Eric Shiraev is a professor and researcher at George Mason University, USA. His multi-disciplinary approach emphasizes the role of culture and identity in social behavior and politics. He is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management (2020) and has co-authored Character Assassination and Reputation Management (Routledge, 2022) and Cross-Cultural Psychology (6^th edition, Routledge, 2024).

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