Swift was one of the most prolific pamphleteers and journalists of his lifetime. One of Swift’s great strengths as a pamphleteer was his keen awareness of what might be described as his target readership. Appreciating that it is easier to confirm rather than alter readers’ opinions, Swift played on the prejudices of his readership. This chapter untangles the numerous and varied polemical strategies that Swift harnessed in his political writing, including ‘parallel history’, hyperbole, and character assassination. The chapter concludes with an extended reading of A Modest Proposal (1729), suggesting that here Swift employed many of the same polemical devices that he had used during his years as a pamphleteer.