Bashing (pejorative)

Bashing is a harsh, gratuitous, prejudicial attack on a person, group, or subject. Literally, bashing is a term meaning to hit or assault, but when it is used as a suffix, or in conjunction with a noun indicating the subject being attacked, it is normally used to imply that the act is motivated by bigotry. The term is also used metaphorically, to describe verbal or critical assaults. Topics which attract bashing tend to be highly partisan and personally sensitive topics for the bashers, the victims, or both. Common areas include religion, nationality, sexuality, and politics.

Physical bashing is differentiated from regular assault because it is a motivated assault, which may be considered a hate crime. In relation to non-physical bashing, the term is used to imply that a verbal or critical attack is similarly unacceptable and similarly prejudicial. Use of the term in this manner is an abusive ad hominem action, used to denounce the attack and admonish the attackers by comparing them to perpetrators of physical bashing.

Karen Franklin, in her paper "Psychosocial motivations of hate crimes perpetrators" identifies the following motivations for bashing: socially instilled prejudice or partisan conflict; the perception that the bashing subject is in some way contrary to, or in offense to, an underlying ideology; group or peer influence.