In terms of political action, murder is more like a natural disaster than a controlled explosion: it will cause chaos and often change the course of history, but its perpetrators can never know in which direction. When Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, his goal was the independence of the Slavic South from the Austro-Hungarian Empire; he got World War I and the massacre of millions. On the other hand, in 1995, when a far-right extremist assassinated the Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak RabinIt can be said that at the Oslo peace accords rally he achieved exactly what he set out to do: permanent destruction of the peace process. For this reason, Rabin's assassination is sometimes called the most “successful” assassination in modern history.
It appears that these are two significantly different actions. But if you use historian Simon Ball's column inDeath by Order: A Modern History of Murder“, they share a set of key characteristics. “Before 1914, murder was the preserve of disaffected individuals, conspirators in royal courts, or small groups of fanatics pursuing lost causes,” writes Ball. The principle established a new pattern: even if the outcome of a murder turned out to be chaotic, the intentions behind it generally were not. The killer became a rational figure, precise in his choice of target, clearly motivated and, crucially, often part of a wider movement or conspiracy to target overthrowing those in power Although we usually only hear about Princip, he acted with a seven-man assassination squad linked to a much larger underground network. The man who shot Rabin was part of a growing movement that included supporters. Itamar Ben-Realpolitician who threatened Rabin on live television shortly before his assassination and who now serves as Israel's Minister of National Security.
Historically, Ball notes, “the direct results of murder have almost always disappointed the killers.” Rabin's assassination is an exception. Another might be the moment in 1942 when British special agents and Czech resistance fighters worked together to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the brutal Nazi commander and one of the key architects of the Final Solution. It was, of course, clear why, and Heydrich's assassination became “the model for 'honorable murder' carried out by righteous democrats,” Ball writes. But other consequences were horrific: the Nazis came to the village of Lidice, which had once sheltered a British radio operator, killed all the men, sent all the women to concentration camps, and sent the “Aryan” children to be raised by German families, and slaughtered the rest. Ball sums up the conclusion of the British report on Heydrich's assassination: “Technical success, operational disaster.”
Death by Order is a dense, detailed and sometimes dry read that's unlikely to get a conspiracy theorist (or anyone) blood pumping, but its international scope and careful documentation are beneficial. It is important to note that he does not ignore state-sponsored assassination plots, especially those orchestrated by the CIA during the Cold War. Ball manages to express ironic shock by quoting the contents of the CIA's assassination manual: While assassination cannot be justified, the manual advises, “the assassination of a political leader whose rising career constitutes a clear and present threat to the cause of freedom may be considered necessary,” meaning that “morally squeamish people should not attempt” to commit assassination. For those who have overcome their doubts, the manual recommends the “most effective” method: dropping a person “onto a solid surface” from a height of seventy-five feet. Pistols are not recommended, but the guide allows rifles, which have become popular weapons in the 21st century.
What do the killers want now? This is an individual question, but one worth asking, not least because political violence appears to be on the rise in the United States. Recent notable examples include two attempts on the life of Donald Trump, including one in which he was hit by a bullet how he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024; the attempted arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in April while he and his family slept inside; June killing of a Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark; and the murder of a right-wing activist Charlie Kirkin September. Two weeks after Kirk was killed, a man opened fire on ICE at a facility in Dallas, where it was not the officers he reported being targeted, but two detainees who were killed; According to his parents, recently he began to be very afraid that he had radiation sickness.
A quick assessment of these events suggests that the era of the Principles is over. We're back in the era of disgruntled plotters and fanatics—lonely and often lonely men (much has changed, but the vast majority of killers are still men) whose shadowy motives seem to be tied together by personal grievances, mental illness, and solipsistic Internet quests. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the twenty-year-old who tried to assassinate Trump in Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican with otherwise mixed views. between various high-profile targets, including Joe Biden and Trump, in the months leading up to the event. We don't know yet what Tyler James RobinsonThe twenty-two-year-old Utah man accused of killing Charlie Kirk was hoping for success. (Robinson has not entered a plea.) The prosecutor in the case, Jeff Gray, painted a scenario in which Robinson, who grew up in a Republican home, had recently turned leftist and became, as his mother allegedly told police, “more pro-gay and trans-right-leaning.” Robinson's roommate and romantic partner was transgender, Gray said. In a text exchange after Kirk's shooting, the roommate asked Robinson why he did it. “I’ve had enough of his hatred,” Robinson responded. “Some hatreds cannot be resolved through negotiations.” Whatever Robinson thinks, the short-term consequences of Kirk's murder include a crackdown on free speech at the federal and local level, as well as the rise of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who is trying to fill the vacuum left by Kirk. And in a potential act of transgender solidarity, if that's the case, Kirk's murder made Robinson's roommate, and perhaps transgender people in general, more vulnerable, not less.
In the past, political violence in the United States was more likely to be perpetrated by groups: the leftist Weather Underground in the seventies; right-wing militias and anti-abortion movements in the eighties and nineties. Nowadays it is more often committed by persons not associated with any organization. As Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, writtenthere is a “deeper trend: a “uncoupling” of political violence as people self-radicalize through online interactions.” Antifa which Trump always talks about as a universal bogeyman – some deadly, disciplined underground network reminiscent of the Irish Republican Army –doesn't exist. Instead, we have people whose opaque, ad hoc gestures rarely fit into a recognizable campaign. Even when they leave a message—partial manifestos, scraps of social media posts, or words etched into bullet casings—clarity is lacking. We are left to explore the ghostly traces of ideas that do not merge into ideology. Speaking about Trump's assassination, Katherine Keneally, a threat assessor, told the publication Time“Incidents like this, where we can't understand why they did it, are becoming more common.”
