Sep 07, 2018
Neuer Medienbericht: "Think Politics Today Is Ugly? Politicians in Ancient Rome Were Insulting, Too", Live Science vom 02.09.2018
Ein weiterer Bericht über den kommenden Beitrag von Prof. Martin Jehne, Leiter unseres TP A, zum Deutschen Historikertag 2018:
"Roman leaders frequently traded verbal attacks and flung deeply personal put-downs and scandalous accusations at their opponents. They even endured barrages of insults from the people that they governed, according to Martin Jehne, a professor of ancient history at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. Jehne will present his findings about insults in ancient Roman politics at the 52nd Meeting of German Historians, taking place at the University of Münster in Germany from Sept. 25 to Sept. 28. The meeting's theme, "Divided Societies," addresses abusive speech and the challenges posed by divisions between social groups from ancient times to the present, according to a conference statement. According to Jehne, Roman senators used blistering putdowns of an opponent to strengthen their standing among their supporters — a strategy that echoes in today's political arena. Insults then — as now — were used for entertainment value, garnering attention and generating indignation, "similar to insults, threats and hate speech on the Internet today," Jehne said in the statement. But such a strategy could backfire, if the audience sided with the person on the receiving end of the insults, Jehne told Live Science in an email. "Insulting in a public context always means to fight for the approval of the audience," he said. "And you never can be sure how people will react.""
""In our research group in Dresden we rely on the basic assumption that invectivity — our artificial term for the whole complex of insulting, abusing, defaming, discriminating and so on — is a universal feature in human societies," Jehne said."
