From Marie Antoinette to Modern Politics: The Deadly Art of the Smear

Sculpture of Marie-Antoinette by Félix Lecomte, 1783. Thomas Garnier/Château de Versailles

Politics is a battlefield, and smear campaigns are the dirty bombs. They’re everywhere, as ubiquitous as dust in the wind, and just as insidious.

Rumour and innuendo are the weapons of choice for those who can’t fight fair.

The corridors of power echo with whispers that turn into roars. In the streets, pamphlets scatter like dead leaves, each one carrying a lie, a half-truth, meant to destroy a reputation, and often, a life.

It’s a tactic as old as time, and still, it persists.

Today’s politicians, like those before them, find themselves under the glare of a media all too eager to stoke the fires of controversy, often blurring the line between truth and fiction.

Stalin and McCarthy

Look at Joseph Stalin. In the 1930s, he turned the Soviet Union into a theatre of fear, where paranoia was the only currency. Accusations flew like bullets—treason, espionage—anything to turn a friend into an enemy.

The “Great Purge” was less a purge, more a massacre. Up to 1.5 million people dead, all because Stalin believed fear was more effective than loyalty.

Then there was Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, whipping up a frenzy with the blunt force of a hammer. He used communism as his weapon and smashed careers.

The “Red Scare” wasn’t just a scare—it was a full-blown panic, like setting the house on fire to kill a spider. McCarthy knew fear was a potent tool, but he wielded it like a bludgeon, with no regard for the wreckage left in his wake.

Marie Antoinette

And then there’s Marie Antoinette, who rose to prominence again in the Olympic Games opening ceremony.

She was a queen trapped in a game she couldn’t win. She married Louis XVI, and for seven long years, they didn’t consummate the marriage.

The court buzzed with speculation—was Louis impotent? Was Marie unfaithful?

The rumours spread like the smell of off camembert, clinging to every surface.

Marie, tired of the suffocating court life, surrounded herself with friends who valued pleasure over politics. The old guard seethed, and the gossip only grew more vicious.

By 1785, they were calling her the “'Autrichienne,” translated as the “Austrian [expletive],” accusing her of meddling in politics to help her brother.

France was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and they blamed her, dubbing her “Madame Deficit.”

The Diamond Necklace Affair

Marie was the scapegoat, her every move scrutinised and twisted. The Diamond Necklace Affair, a scandal in which she played no part, was pinned on her, adding another stain to her name.

This was a scandal at the court of King Louis XVI of France, where Queen Marie Antoinette’s reputation, already damaged by gossip, was further tainted by a false accusation that she conspired to defraud the Crown’s jewellers for a costly diamond necklace, despite her having actually rejected the purchase, with her signature forged by Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy.

The Crop Failure of 1788

Then came the hailstorm and crop failure of 1788, leading to famine.

The press gleefully reported that Marie had callously suggested the starving masses eat cake—a lie, but one that stuck, cementing her as the symbol of royal excess.

The revolution followed, and with it, the final, brutal accusations. They said she conspired with foreign powers, even accused her of incest with her son.

The young Louis XVII was torn from her arms, a final, heart-wrenching blow in a life marked by betrayal and loss.

Young Louis, the unfortunate royal, found himself under the care of Citizen Richard, a cobbler with all the educational prowess of a blunt instrument.

Richard’s version of schooling was simple: revolutionary songs and lessons in how to betray one’s mother.

Above him, Marie Antoinette languished, just a floor away, caught in a tragedy that could only be rivalled by the darkest of dramas.

Marie Antoinette Portrayed Grace Until the End

Marie Antoinette faced her final days with a quiet strength that belied the chaos around her.

Her once grand attire reduced to a threadbare white smock, her hair shorn with all the delicacy of a butcher’s cleaver, she still held her head high as they paraded her through the streets of Paris towards the guillotine. She was bleeding, both literally and figuratively, but she remained unbroken.

Even in her last moments, she managed a gesture of grace with last words spoken after she accidentally stepped on her executioner’s shoe being, “Pardon me sir, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Meanwhile, the revolutionaries, those self-proclaimed defenders of liberty, found that the guillotine was a fickle mistress.

Hébert, who had once tormented Marie, met his end with all the grace of a drowning cat, flailing and undignified. Fouquier-Tinville, the man who had prosecuted her, pleaded his innocence with the desperation of a man caught in a trap of his own making.

“I’m the axe,” he cried, “you don’t kill the axe!”

But the blade, indifferent and cold, fell just the same.

The revolution, in its relentless march, left behind a path of severed heads and crushed hopes, a grim testament to the price of power—and a reminder that in every age, the lines between truth and propaganda are drawn with blood.