Why are conservatives so fond of character assassination?

[Deleted member 196663]

By definition character assassination is an attack on someone with a good reputation that is malicious and unjustified. So if a charge of racism or misogyny against someone is baseless it would be character assassination. But if it is accurate it would just be the truth. In my experience the left labels people accurately for the most part in the same way you would label a criminal (ex. murderer or rapist) for the type of crime that they committed.

I would then say that you don't have much experience, because the labeling of individuals and groups is how the left routinely responds to disagreement. It's used more as a weapon than a way to classify someone appropriately.

 

[Buck Swope]

TS and the left leaning posters ironically shit on themselves before leaving page 1.

As you do constantly.

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

I would then say that you don't have much experience, because the labeling of individuals and groups is how the left routinely responds to disagreement. It's used more as a weapon than a way to classify someone appropriately.

That's not true but go ahead and give some examples.

 

[sangreporsangre]

Seems to me that it's a staple of politics, it certainly isn't exclusive to one side.

 

[Buck Swope]

Seems to me that it's a staple of politics, it certainly isn't exclusive to one side.

You nailed it. It is human nature to pick sides and defend.

Crazy shit, no?

 

[BruceLeeOnTRT]

I agree with the bulk of your post, except for the part where you narrow it down to 1 group. Character assassination is as old as time, and not exclusive to just conservatives. Although the Bush family are probably the best at it.

Popular figures who are enemies of the people in power cannot just be killed, else they become martyrs. Assassinating their character is usually meant as a warning, and a prelude to the actual assassination.

Once people no longer care about that individual, or even begin to dislike them, it is perfect time to remove them from the chessboard.

 

[Renard]

The leftists who constantly scream racist, sexist and Islamaphobic at everyone who disagrees with them think that conservatives do too much character assassination. You idiots are an embarrassment.

 

[KantoTerror]

Curious about Bill Clinton as an example...Did he or didn't he have sexual relations with that woman?

 

[Deleted member 196663]

That's not true but go ahead and give some examples.

Trump supporters are racist, misogynistic and homophobic.


You never heard that one, though, right?

 

[Goonerview]

Trump is literally Hitler.

End thread

 

[Hoof Hearted]

I haven't noticed a fondness for character assassination on the right at all. Mild mockery ie referring to the 'snowflakes' is the most common offense.

I am called a nazi/white supremacist in 8/10 war room threads I post in despite repeatedly explaining that I am not white. It's so constant you just stop noticing.

As far as 'official' examples there has never been a US president subjected to so many character assassination attempts as Trump. Not even close, not even the last 3 combined.

Trump's no stranger to character assasination though. He was pushing the Obama birther conspiracy even when he knew it was bullshit.

 

[Stoic1]

As you do constantly.

Pointing out a fact or example not character assassination. It is an observation.

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

Trump supporters are racist, misogynistic and homophobic.


You never heard that one, though, right?

Many of them clearly are. Both Trump and his supporters have a record of making racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments or supporting policies consistent with these labels.







So if you say his supporters fit these descriptions many clearly do. That's a generalization not a 100% absolute condemnation of every Trump supporter. So where are the baseless accusations that are commonly made by liberals?

 

[ManCityFC9]

Character Assassination

n.

the malicious and unjustified harming of a person's good reputation.

Smear attacks are very popular in politics. The reason is obvious. One of the quickest ways to destroy a person's career is to damage their reputation. If you can paint them as dishonest or immoral in some way then you can prevent them from getting elected. If there is credible evidence that a politician has done something or said something that reflects poorly on their character in a way that can severely damage their career then the story becomes a scandal. The media loves this. They profit from it and people love gossip so they listen to it. But if the allegations are unjustified and made with malicious intent to harm someone with a good reputation then that is by definition character assassination. This has gone both ways. There are character assassins on the left and the right but the right seems particularly fond of this.

There are countless examples for instance the Monica Lewinsky scandal which tarnished Bill Clinton's reputation, the sexual harassment allegations against Hermain Cain that forced him to withdraw from his campaign for President and the allegations of sexual molestation against Donald Trump last year that stemmed from comments he made on a hot mic which turned in to a major story involving various women claiming he inappropriately touched them or engaged in some kind of perverted behavior. Sex scandals are particularly popular.

I personally believe that someone's personal life is fair game especially when they are in a position of influence and what type of person they are matters. If they claims against them involve criminal acts then it is especially important that they be investigated. However when the claims are not credible people need to let it go and stop taking shots at that. When a claim has been discredited and it is repeated to deliberately damage someone's reputation that is character assassination. Case in point I got in a heated debate with the poster named Coolidge over the allegations that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. engaged in extramarital affairs. I agreed that if he did that is a poor reflection on him as a person especially as he was known to the world as a pastor who was believed to be a decent family man with good moral values. But the claims were not credible. Snopes.com did an investigation and determined that there was no evidence for the more extreme claims against him particularly the allegations by an anonymous FBI source that Dr. King engaged in sex parties with White Russian prostitutes who he allegedly beat up. I pointed out that there is no evidence corroborating those claims and despite there being sealed tapes from the secret wire taps the FBI made of King's hotel rooms we don't know who he had sex with outside his marriage if he did with any one and not a single woman has come forward with credible evidence that she had sex with King never mind the disturbing allegations of his engagement with prostitutes. King had been dead for nearly 5 decades and no woman has been proven to have been involved in an extramarital affair with him. The FBI was also running a smear campaign against King led by J. Edgar Hoover which involved failed attempts to connect him to communist groups and harassing mail sent to his wife with suggestions that he should commit suicide.

These attacks on King clearly qualify as character assassination. More recently we saw a wave of attacks on our last President, Barack Obama that involved some of the most disturbing and salacious allegations imaginable from claims that he was some kind of domestic enemy (e.g. a Black Nationalist, Secret Muslim, Manchurian Candidate, Terrorist Sympathizer and even the Anti-Christ) to the questioning of his natural-born citizenship to the more ridiculous claims that his wife Michelle is a tranny born a man named Michael and that he is a bisexual crackhead who has killed his former gay lovers to cover up his sexual orientation. I personally investigated the claims of Larry Sinclair, a deranged pathological liar and career criminal who engaged in a ridiculous smear campaign against Obama when he was running for President and throughout his Presidency which included him failing a polygraph test then claiming the administrators were paid off by David Axelrod to set him up (with no evidence), publishing a book documenting his story and experiences as well as filing multiple lawsuits against Obama, The Democratic Party and anyone he thought was engaged in the conspiracy against him, investigations by the secret service, arrests and internet meltdowns including threatening to fight Youtube posters (including me) and posting a video of himself attempting suicide by overdosing on his medication.

That rolling freak show and the Birther Movement are what convinced me that conservatives love to assassinate the character of politicians and public figures. Again there are smears on both sides but seeing Larry Sinclair's face on the front of a tabloid in the grocery store, hearing about the Birther nonsense and then seeing at a major story on National TV, reading an article about Obama being legally an Arab-American because of mixed ancestry which was obviously a lie and then seeing a woman telling John McCain she didn't trust Obama because she read about him and found out he was an Arab a few months later have shown me how sinister the minds of many conservatives is and how much they love to try to destroy people.

Like I said, there are countless examples. I just mentioned some to make a point.

So what is the obsession with character assassination, conservatives? Why do you love tearing people down?

I'd definitely move away from the disposition that it is mostly conservatives that are obsessed with character assassination.
-MSM has brought it to a whole other level with their biased reporting and misinterpretations
(one example was the CNN incident with Sinatra's daughter(Nancy) forbidding Trump to use a song('My Way') during inauguration I believe)... there are others but I'd rather not digress.

But to your question, I think you answered it within your OP; it truly is the quickest and easiest ways to garner support of the masses and discredit a political opponent.
-Honestly, a very small percentage of the population truly pays attention to political issues beyond a superficial level.
--It is much easier to persecute a political opponent for their past indiscretions than to actually research their political standing on each political topic.

'Politics' come along in "seasons" now, in which during this time people pay additional attention to political adverts, debates, etc.
This is a prime opportunity to conduct character assassinations which serve as "cliffnotes" of sorts that help people make knee jerk assessments of political candidates.
--These accusations hardly provide any understanding between the correlation of candidates's stances and what we perceive to be in our best interests.
---You find reasons NOT to vote for someone as opposed to determining why you should.

Can you imagine where we would be if there were no identity politics, there were limited campaign budgets, and detailed debate questions?
-I can't imagine but maybe, a good candidate?

 

[Buck Swope]

Pointing out a fact or example not character assassination. It is an observation.

,

What fact? I'll wait............

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

I'd definitely move away from the disposition that it is mostly conservatives that are obsessed with character assassination.
-MSM has brought it to a whole other level with their biased reporting and misinterpretations
(one example was the CNN incident with Sinatra's daughter(Nancy) forbidding Trump to use a song('My Way') during inauguration I believe)... there are others but I'd rather not digress.

But to your question, I think you answered it within your OP; it truly is the quickest and easiest ways to garner support of the masses and discredit a political opponent.
-Honestly, a very small percentage of the population truly pays attention to political issues beyond a superficial level.
--It is much easier to persecute a political opponent for their past indiscretions than to actually research their political standing on each political topic.

'Politics' come along in "seasons" now, in which during this time people pay additional attention to political adverts, debates, etc.
This is a prime opportunity to conduct character assassinations which serve as "cliffnotes" of sorts that help people make knee jerk assessments of political candidates.
--These accusations hardly provide any understanding between the correlation of candidates's stances and what we perceive to be in our best interests.
---You find reasons NOT to vote for someone as opposed to determining why you should.

Can you imagine where we would be if there were no identity politics, there were limited campaign budgets, and detailed debate questions?
-I can't imagine but maybe, a good candidate?

Scandals are the quickest way to destroy a politician's reputation. The effectiveness of them is clear but from my observation conservatives are more likely to use character assassination as a tactic and support baseless claims.

 

[Bald1]

By definition character assassination is an attack on someone with a good reputation that is malicious and unjustified. So if a charge of racism or misogyny against someone is baseless it would be character assassination. But if it is accurate it would just be the truth. In my experience the left labels people accurately for the most part in the same way you would label a criminal (ex. murderer or rapist) for the type of crime that they committed.

You have got to be kidding.

Jordan Peterson - fascist
Dave Rubin - alr-right
Milo Yannowhateveritis - racist
Ben Shapiro - nazi

These are just a few of the factually incorrect accusations levied at these guys in the last few months by crazy leftists. Slander and character assassination has become the alt-lefts bread and butter in lieu of reasoned discussion over the last few years.

 

[MicroBrew]

Character assassination is from the left and right. The right used to be pretty dam good at branding anyone with any sort of criticism of US foreign policy and progressive causes as Commies. Anti-American is another term thrown about.

Anyone critiquing Israel is branded an anti-Semite or insinuated he/she is, and this isn't coming from the Left.

The mainstream left for its part will slam people as racist or Islamophobic if you are perceived to disagree with the mainstream liberal intelligentsia narrative. Leftists like Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris , Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Majid Nawaz are not immune from liberal character assassination.

 

[ManCityFC9]

Scandals are the quickest way to destroy a politician's reputation. The effectiveness of them is clear but from my observation conservatives are more likely to use character assassination as a tactic and support baseless claims.

Scandals are indeed much more destructive but happen at a much less frequency and are very difficult to unravel(many times, the incident is either very old or requires some casualties along the way.)

Character assassinations flourish on misinformation, which can easily be manipulated by incomplete quotation, or not describing the setting or context of the discussion from which the sound bite came from.
-I'd have agreed with you a year ago with respects to conservatives(i.e. fox news) using this more than their opposite, but after Trump became president and taking notice to the trivial things that MSM(cnn, msnbc, nytimes, etc.) report about trump, Liberals have taken it to a new level.
--"Trump didn't wave while boarding air force one"
--"Trump ate KFC with a fork and knife"
--"Trump eats steak with ketchup"

There are a plethora of things to report about the Trump administration, even though it has only been 2 months, but the media is trying to focus on the strangest things to report.

The political environment has gotten beyond comical to the point of trivial commentary, constant ridicule, and judgement.
-Not only is this behavior bad for the status of the press but this kind of non-substantive reporting gets picked by the public and is actually utilized at any attempts I have had to discuss the current political state with people in public.

Other posters have mentioned the current trend of liberals to name call, stereotype, and classify people with differing opinions.
-It is in a really bad state at the moment.

 

[TSO]

I call White Supremacists Nazis because many of them really are Neo-Nazis and admire Hitler. Otherwise I don't do that. But like I said while you may be able to name examples of character assassination the extreme nature of the attacks by conservatives and the popularity of the attacks indicate that conservatives are especially fond of character assassination.

The Liberal platform is character assassination, they don't even try to hide it. You seem confused as to what goes on in your party.