The Smear Campaign – How The Media Destroys Reputations

You’ve had your opinion about particular individuals shaped for you without your consent on multiple occasions. Think of a politician or celebrity that you dislike. Did you form that negative opinion of them by yourselves, or have you been manipulated?

What do you think about Julian Assange? What do you think about Jordan Peterson? What do you think about Russell Brand? Or perhaps there’s a politician or public figure in your own country that you dislike. Why do you dislike them?

If you believe that you’ve personally formed all of your opinions about all the famous people you know, then you’re severely underestimating the power of the media, and the power of the smear campaign.

If you want to have an understanding of what’s happening when you consume media, you need to understand the smear campaign. Without understanding what the smear campaign is and how it works, you’ll be manipulated just like the rest of the public.

Haven’t you ever wondered why the media is constantly attacking particular people? Haven’t you ever wondered why there are so many claims about anti-semitism, racism and sexism about people in newspapers? Haven’t you ever wondered why every single month there’s a new buzzword or narrative in the media about politicians?

The following is a comprehensive guide on how a smear campaign works, which I have split into 6 sections:

1. Labelling

2. Find a weak spot and attack it relentlessly

3. Remove Context

4. Guilty by association

5. Use the right images

6. Don’t make it obvious.

The goal of a smear campaign is character assassination. They’re a highly effective technique powerful people utilise through the media to attack individuals they don’t like.

The public are absolute suckers for smear campaigns. It’s my hope that after reading this article you’ll be able to identify smear campaigns when you see them in the media and become less easily manipulated by them. And it’s my hope that you’ll stop being such a sucker for smear campaigns, and go on to teach others what you’ve learnt.

This is how the media destroys reputations.

1. Labelling

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” – Joseph Goebells – Nazi Minister of propaganda

If Julian Assange exposes war crimes and secrets of the American government, they can retaliate with a media smear campaign. They can repeat the same labels again and again on TV news, online news and in newspapers: Criminal, Russian Agent, Traitor, Not a real Journalist, Sex offender.

Yet each of these labels are entirely false.

Use the same labels, over and over again, and eventually the public will come to assume that these labels have a certain amount of truth to them. After all, there’s no way that lies could be told so loudly, so blatantly and repeated so often, is there?

The labels will be repeated again and again, often with a straight face and an authoritative tone of voice on TV News (people are easily fooled by non-verbal cues such as these).

These labels don’t have to be clever, sophisticated or even accurate – they just need to change the way the audience of the smear campaign feels towards the victim. The goal of a smear campaign is to create a link in our subconscious mind between a negative emotion and a particular person.

People have been attacking each other with labelling for centuries. During the American presidential campaign of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was called “an uncivilized atheist, anti-American, a tool for the godless French.”. Only now the mass media is able to spread these labels to millions of people simultaneously.

In print media, you can find these labels placed throughout the article of a hit piece. On TV media, you will notice the same terms being said again and again on multiple channels. You might find yourself wondering what this latest buzzword mean, assuming it arose organically. When in fact, the buzzword you keep hearing is part of a planned smear campaign that’s trying to stick a particular label on somebody.

For example, during the US election Bernie Saunders was suddenly stuck with the “Bernie Bro” label. Apparently, Bernie’s supporters had been acting abusive online (welcome to the internet?). Quickly, TV news channel pundits on multiple platforms began sitting around discussing Bernie Saunders’s “Bernie Bro” problem as if it was a legitimate problem. Of course, the “Bernie Bro” narrative was entirely fabricated by the media in an attempt to smear Bernie Saunders’s reputation.

Let’s take a look at another example, this time in print media, in The Atlantic for a classic example of labelling at work:

Notice how the subject of American war crimes is not a focus of the article, instead it focuses on the personal characteristics of Julian Assange.

Smear campaigns are character assassinations. They do not attack the issue at hand, they attack the person. We have emotional and tribal minds, so attacking a person’s character is an effective method of changing our opinion about somebody.

In particular, the idea that Julian Assange smeared faeces on the wall of the embassy he was trapped inside was repeated again, and again, and again throughout the media. Of course, this story was completely false.

Why did they tell us again and again that Julian Assange smeared faeces on the walls of the embassy? Because it links Julian Assange with a feeling of disgust in our subconscious mind. Those who may have been more vocal about supporting him begin to feel less motivated to do so. Labelling attacks our subconscious and manipulates how we feel, emotionally, towards a particular person.

Let’s look at labelling once again in the following hit-piece on Jordan Peterson:

Of course, Jordan Peterson isn’t right-wing at all. He doesn’t present “pseudo-facts”, in fact he has over 10,000 citations in academic journals. And he certainly isn’t a conspiracy theorist.

The accuracy of the labels isn’t important, only that they change the opinion of large chunks of the audience against the victim of the smear campaign. Many people who read this hit-piece on Peterson will make their mind up about him immediately.

From then on, every time they’re exposed to Peterson, they will view him through the negative filter produced by the hit-piece. Those taken in by the hit-piece they’ve read previously will no longer be able to accurately evaluate the content of the ideas of the smeared individual. Their mind about this individual has effectively been made up for them.

Let’s look at another example of labelling being used to target British politician Jeremy Corbyn:

These labels are of course, as usual, totally untrue. But, as discussed earlier, the accuracy of the labels are unimportant, only that they influence the opinion of the audience.

You might wonder if a front cover as ridiculously biased as this could fool any audience. Unfortunately, it does. These labels will enter the subconscious mind of much of the audience and influence how they feel about Corbyn.

Labelling is the first obvious sign that you’re looking at a smear campaign. If you see a piece of media that focuses on labelling an individual’s character rather than the content of their arguments, you’re consuming a smear campaign, and should be immediately disregarded as manipulative and untrustworthy.

“It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success” – Joseph Goebbels – Nazi Minister of propaganda

2. Find A Weak spot and attack it relentlessly

If your opponent has an injured knee, you kick and punch his knee again and again until they forfeit. This is exactly what smear campaigns do. Only in this case the attacks aren’t on the victim’s body, instead they attack the victim’s reputation.

Everyone has a weak spot. If you look hard enough you can find it. And if you can’t find one, you can create one.

Despite Bernie Saunders’s net worth being just under $2 million dollars, which is far poorer than most other members of congress, the news media continually used the “Bernie three houses Saunders” label to smear him while he tried to run for the democratic nominee.

This was an effective smear. Bernie Saunders often talks about millionaires and billionaires being a major problem with America, yet he is technically a millionaire himself. This is a perfect weak spot. People don’t like hypocrites, and this was the perfect opportunity to paint Bernie Saunders as a hypocrite.

His opponent in 2016 Hilary Clinton, who has a net worth of $120 million dollars, received no such criticisms of her wealth. This is because she was the favoured candidate of the corporations who control the media.

Politicians and celebrities often have professional media handlers who make sure that they’re never caught in any photograph that can be used to smear them and ruin their reputation. Jordan Peterson has no such media handlers.

People who are in the public eye are often photographed thousands of times every single month. It only takes a single photograph in the wrong situation to smear someone’s reputation.

This particular photograph was held up by a presenter on CBC news while she asked “Is this you..?” to a frustrated Jordan Peterson during an interview. The photo was used again and again in hit-pieces on Peterson throughout online media.

Russell Brand begins to see increasing popularity for his Youtube videos critising large corporations and big business. So begins the smear campaign. The news media quickly targeted Russell Brand’s most obvious weak spot – the fact that he’s a wealthy celebrity.

Everyone has a weakspot. And those conducting a smear campaign will always find it, no matter how small it may be.

3. Remove context

While discussing Incels (“Involuntarily celebate” men who are unable to find a romantic partner), Jordan Peterson proposed that a solution to the problem of Incels might be “enforced monogamy”. Media outlets used this to smear his reputation, making it appear as if he was proposing that women should be forced to partner up with unattractive men in order to keep them happy.

“The implication that that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to take young women at the point of a gun and deliver them to useless men. It’s like: no one has ever believed that” – Jordan Peterson

As anyone who listened to Jordan Peterson in context would know, “enforced monogamy” just means having a society that encourages people to be monogamous, rather than polygamous. Which is hardly a controversial statement. But by removing context the news was able to make Jordan Peterson look both crazy and sexist at the same time.

Jeremy Corbyn had his reputation repeatedly smeared by the media over his relationship with the IRA (Irish republican Army, a group responsible for a number of bombings in the UK).

When asked to condemn the bombings, he was reported saying the following:

Corbyn: Look, bombing is wrong, all bombing is wrong. Of course I condemn it.”

Interviewer: “But you’re condemning all bombing, can you condemn the IRA without equating it to …”

Corbyn: “No.”

Of course, this interview has had it’s full context removed in order to smear Corbyn. What the news media failed to report was what he said just afterwards:

Corbyn: “No, I think what you have to say is all bombing has to be condemned and you have to bring about a peace process. Listen, in the 1980s, Britain was looking for a military solution in Ireland – it clearly was never going to work. Ask anyone in the British army at the time … I condemn all the bombing by both the loyalists and the IRA.”

You may have noticed that politicians have a certain strange way of answering questions. it often seems as though they’re unable to give a simple answer to a simple question. This is because they have to be incredibly careful at all times not to say anything that could be taken of out context by the news media.

Politicans can’t speak like normal human beings, because if they do they news media will take them out of context and smear their reputation.

When you see somebody quoted in an article, ask yourself: am I seeing the full context? If possible, go to the source material on Youtube or wherever you can find it, and watch the full interview. Stop being manipulated by news media who quote people out of context.

4. Guilty By Association

When a smear campaign tries to place a negative label on a particular person, there’s no easier way to do so than simply associating them with others who carry that label.

Jordan Peterson isn’t particularly politically right-wing (In fact, he’s performed long-form lectures explaining the horrors of Nazi Germany). However, associating Peterson with other right-wing figures persuades the audience that he too must somehow be right-wing.

The truth is, Jordan Peterson has more or less no connection with any of people named in the article. But the simple act of mentioning the name of a right-wing individual in an article about Jordan Peterson leads the reader to assume that there must at least be some connection between them.

Association Fallacy is a known psychological fallacy. It’s like saying: Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Vegetarianism must be evil. Or: Some charities have been fraudulent. Therefore, charities must be frauds.

With the example of Jordan Peterson the logic is: Some famous right-wing individuals have supported Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson must be right-wing.

Smear campaigns reach deep into our psyche to try to manipulate how we feel about a particular person. The guilty by association technique can trick our subconscious mind into associating people we don’t like with the smeared individual.

Of course, like all techniques used by the smear campaign, the guilty by association technique is an ad-hominem attack that focuses on the individual’s character instead of the content of their ideas.

Nobody has the power to control who associates with them. Nobody can control who shares or supports their work, so the smeared individual is more or less powerless to counterattack.

The guilty by association technique can be done in a rather subtle manner. The smear campaign doesn’t have to state outright that Bad Person A supports Person B. It can simply name-drop Bad Person A while discussing Person B. The mere name-dropping of Bad person A people leads the audience to assume that they must have some connection with person B, even if that so-called connection isn’t made clear.

Another common use of this technique is by associating an individual’s fans or followers with the individual themselves. A common smear of US politician Bernie Saunders was that his “Bernie Bro” followers were harassing his political opponents online.

For any popular figure, there are always people acting mean online. That’s just how people act on the internet. But by focusing on the behaviour of a few fanatics leaving abusive messages online, the media can associate these badly behaved fans with the individual themselves.

All popular figures have fans acting poorly online, which means this particular smear can be applied to anyone at anytime. Criticising someone because of how their fans behave is meaningless, yet most of the public will fall for this smear tactic over and over again.

5. Use The Right images

If you have your photo taken enough times, eventually you’ll end up looking stupid, ugly, insane or power mad in at least one of them. The human face ends up in all kinds of odd, distorted positions if you freeze it in motion.

Smear campaigns often use images where the target looks a particular way. The smear campaign rarely uses images where the target is stood pridefully, confidently, with their shoulders back and looking heroically into the distance. Instead, they use images that carry negative connotations.

Some newspapers go to great lengths to portray the victim of their smear campaign in the most unfavourable way they possibly can.

You might think that such an obvious smear campaign as the one above wouldn’t be effective. Think again.

Human beings are tribal creatures. Our older, lizard brain is evolved to live in tribes of 150 people. In the environment our lizard brain is adapted to, photographs didn’t exist. At a base level, we react to still images as if they’re real human beings, after all, still photographs are completely foreign to our lizard brain.

When you see a still image of someone looking insane, this can effect the way you emotionally feel about the individual in the image. You may have your feelings towards that individual changed on the subconscious level. In the case of the “Court Jezter” image above, you may begin to view Jeremy Corbyn as someone who’s not to be taken seriously.

“Do you know what your rating is on Trustpilot? 84% 1-star for the BBC, 59% 1-star for ITV, and 72% 1 star for channel 4. I don’t care what you say, you’re just smear merchants. Not one of you can tell me what I believe. Not one of you knows, but all of the public know, because they can go to my Youtube channel, Sargon Of Akkad, and just watch for themselves. I’ve been doing this for 5 years, I have over a million subscribers just go and have a look. I’m not answering your questions, I’m not apologising for anything you dirty, dirty smear merchants” – Carl Benjamin speaks directly to the news media.

Smear campaigns are about manipulating your deepest tribal emotions. In our tribal environment, a man holding up his hand towards us would be a defensive gesture. The exact same body language is captured and displayed here to make you feel as though Carl Benjamin is being defensive or being dishonest.

This image was not chosen randomly. It was selected carefully by editors in order to smear the reputation of Carl Benjamin. When you see an image of Carl Benjamin holding defensive body language at the top of the article, you will then read the rest of the article through the emotional filter created by the image.

Using the right images is an important component of an effective smear campaign.

6. Don’t make it obvious

While purposefully ruining somebody’s reputation, media outlets need to keep an aura of seriousness and respectability. Non-verbal cues are incredibly powerful. For many people, if someone on the news wearing a suit and tie tells them something with authoritative tone of voice ,they will believe them.

At the very least, most people assume what the person (who appears to carry authority) is saying must have at least some credibility to it. In reality, there are many cases where a professionally dressed man on CNN spews utter lies and misrepresentations. The non-verbal cues cover up the ridiculousness of the content of the speaker.

Hit-pieces must at least give the impression that the author has made some effort to be fair-minded and unbiased, even if the overall purpose of the piece is to smear somebody’s reputation.

If a smear campaign goes too far, it becomes too obvious to the audience that the media just wants to attack the individual rather than give them a fair hearing. The more sophisticated smear campaigns will keep up the appearance of an unbiased news outlet, all the while framing the issue in a totally biased manner.

An obvious example of the following CBC interview with Jordan Peterson, where the interview does her absolute best to smear Peterson’s reputation in a manipulative manner, all the while keeping a straight face and professional appearance:

Who Conducts Smear Campaigns And Why?

When an individual threatens a power structure, that power structure will do everything they possibly can to destroy that individual.

In some countries, if a journalist goes against the government (the centre of power), the government will simply assassinate them. In more developed countries, assassination isn’t an option, so they need to rely on more covert means.

The smear campaign is a weapon. If you can’t attack the person directly with physical force, destroy their reputation and encourage the public to turn against them.

Julian Assange was smeared because he exposed the war crimes of the United States government. They responded by using their immense power to shape a negative narrative around Julian Assange throughout multiple countries.

Bernie Saunders was smeared because he wanted to give free healthcare to all Americans, which would destroy billions of dollars in profit for the pharmaceutical industry. He also wanted to impose a tax on Wall Street. The news media in America is controlled by big business, so in order to protect their wealth, they launched a smear campaign against Saunders.

Jeremy Corbyn was smeared because he wanted to increase taxes on big business.

Russell Brand was smeared because he began to become an influential force in challenging big business and the existing power structures.

Remember, the mainstream media is not an independent entity, it is controlled by powerful people and powerful organisations.

If you challenge the centre of power, you will be smeared by the media. There are many centres of power around the world, mostly consisting of governments and giant corporations. Whether you challenge the Chinese government, Wall Street, the Australian Government, the government of Saudi Arabia, your reputation will be smeared and large chunks of the public will be manipulated into turning against you.

Of course, smear campaigns can often be shocking and interesting. Therefore they bring in plenty of clicks and plenty of revenue. News media can often act as “smear merchants” who sell their ability to smear the reputation of others to powerful people and organisations. The news media loves to smear people because it generates controversy, clicks, revenue and pleases powerful people.

The Smear Campaign – A Tool Of The Psychopaths

Do you feel it? That toxic vibe? That toxic feeling? That sick feeling in your stomach? If you’re a more sensitive type, the topic of smear campaigns will be hard to think about.

How can people be so manipulative? How can the media purposefully destroy the careers of perfectly innocent people. How can they manage to turn millions of people against a single individual with lies and misrepresentations?

Can you sense that toxicity? It’s because the smear campaign is a tool of the psychopath.

Psychopaths are people without a conscience. They feel no empathy for people who are suffering, and as such, they live their lives like a giant chess game.

They target venerable people in order to use them and achieve their own selfish goals. It’ is estimated that psychopaths make up roughly 1% of the population (there are certainty plenty of psychopaths working in the media).

If you step on the toes of your psychopathic work colleague, they will spread rumours about you, make covert “suggestions” about you, convince others at your workplace that you’re crazy and untrustworthy and conduct a character assassination on you.

It’s not uncommon for a pathologically envious sociopathic co-worker to feed misinformation about someone to their colleagues and bosses in order to remove them as a “threat” in order to climb the corporate ladder.

“Covert predators like these will spread falsehoods to slander your reputation or smear your credibility to others. This is a form of gaslighting intended to manage your image in the public eye to ensure that no one would believe you were being abused” – Psychcentral.com

The media is psychopathic. It’s run both by actual psychopaths and sociopaths, as well as normal people who feel self-justified to act in a psychopathic manner – they feel justified as they smear the reputation of an innocent person.

When you see through a smear campaign, when you just how manipulative the media can be, it can make you sick to your stomach. That’s because you’re sensing the vibes of psychopathic behaviour. Yet there are effective ways of dealing with a smear campaign:

If you are being met with any kind of smear campaign, stick to the facts. As difficult as it may be, try not to become emotionally responsive in public – narcissists will use your emotional reactions against you to further depict you as the “crazy” one. –Psychcentral.com

The best way to reduce the effectiveness of smear campaigns is to call them out and educate people on what they are and how they’re used. We can help to reduce the impact of these manipulative, psychopathic techniques by educating others on how they work so that they can recognise a smear campaign in action themselves.

Let’s eradicate the smear campaign from the face of the earth.