Suzy Kassem Quotes
Remember this, and remember this well: when someone is telling the TRUTH and exposing information that is meant to be hidden from the masses, the side that is being attacked and accused will use all their resources and associations to try to discredit and discount the professional and moral character of the person revealing the threatening information. They will do everything to make that person look smaller than they really are.
Kassem, Suzy. Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem. Awakened Press, 2011.
Ad hominum attacks are attacks against the person—not his views or arguments against them and not even what he has allegedly done or the consequences of what he has done to others. It is direct character assassination. This is much more effective than trying to argue what wrong has been done. It has been a very common tactic of the Right Wing Republicans and the Tea Party against liberals and supporters if desegregation, and has also been used by extreme leftists in attacking powerful industrialists. When Assange published thousands of State Department cables, many of which exposed the fact that Government officials had been lying to the public and Congress while under oath, there was a massive ad hominum attack on Assange casting aspersions on any information he might claim is real, but never once denying that any of the cables were genuine. The attacks claimed that Assange’s publication would cause American agents throughout the world to be exposed and killed, but even a year after these accusations, neither the State Department nor the intelligence agencies could point to a single case where an American agent had come to harm. The embarrassment was however profound, and some governments were outraged that their confidential dealings with the United State had been exposed to public scrutiny.