Letters | 1 November 2018

Political vitriol

Sir: Vitriol and incivility seem to be everywhere in politics just now. In the last issue (27 October) John R. MacArthur linked a ‘rise in national coarseness’ to the election of Donald Trump, while Freddy Gray hints at a longer historical perspective when he writes that American politics ‘has always been unpleasant’. That ‘always’ is not hyperbole: in Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow describes in vivid detail the ‘vile partisanship’ of the 1790s, stoked by newspapers that were often ‘scurrilous and inaccurate’.

‘Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,’ said Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. The second president, John Adams, lamented the ‘sour, angry, peevish, fretful, lying paragraphs’ with which the press battered the government. By 1792, early America was already becoming accustomed to ‘post-truth’ public life.

According to Chernow, ‘anonymous attacks permitted extraordinary bile to seep into political discourse… The brutal tone of these papers made politics a wounding ordeal.’ Sometimes, the wounds were literal. Hamilton once asked demonstrators to show respect, and was instead greeted by a volley of stones, one of which struck him on the forehead. ‘If you use such knock-down arguments,’ he remarked, ‘I must retire.’ More shocking is the reaction of Jefferson: a bitter enemy of Hamiltonian policies, he was elated on hearing the news of the street brawl.
Jon Wainwright

London SE5

Short position

Sir: In response to Mr Skelsey’s animadversions on Nigel Short and the election for the post of president of the World Chess Federation, I fear that in trying to excuse the behaviour of the English Chess Federation, the correspondent misses the irony of his stance (Letters, 27 October). Had the ECF right from the start supported Nigel, arguably the most outstanding personality in the history of English chess, then he might well have stood a good chance.