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Profiles:

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     overview

This note considers assassinations as a political and online cultural phenomenon.

It covers -

• studies - an outline of literature on the basis of assassinations, ethics, key incidents and popular culture
• fears and fantasies - a discussion of newsgroups, conspiracy sites and other aspects of assassination as an online cultural phenomenon
• incidents - a chronology of assassinations (and failed attempts) in Australia, Europe and elsewhere since the 1540s

It supplements discussion of security, censorship, governance, sedition and bombmaking. It highlights assassination of political and other figures, illustrating that the phenomenon is not uniquely modern, tied to religious belief or restricted to action by groups.

The following paragraphs consider questions about identification and some issues.

     introduction

Assassination has been variously characterised as an expression of sectarian violence, a response to modernisation, an artefact of mass media coverage and something that threatens civil society and thus requires restriction through sedition or other legislation.

Those characterisations have been disputed by observers who have argued that assassination flourished in pre-modern societies, has often been independent of religious affiliation and has existed without the oxygen of publicity. Observers have also questioned both the efficacy and basis for proposed restrictions on publishing and speech.

Disagreement partly reflects uncertainty about definitions. Does assassination encompass any violent death of a public figure? Should the term be restricted to acts by individuals rather than agencies of the state? Does it relate only to government figures? Does it necessarily have a covert flavour? Does it occur outside national/international law. Is there value in differentiating between political (or religious) motivations and acts by those with psychological problems?

Lack of unanimity about the concept results in claims that assassination victims include John Lennon, Salman Rushdie's Japanese translator, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas a' Becket, Federico Garcia Lorca, Harvey Milk, Queen Myongsong of Korea and Admiral Yamamoto.

     modernity

The online Encyclopadia Britannica anounces that

One of the most conspicuous facts of public life in the 20th century has been the killing, usually for political reasons, of public figures. Such murders are called assassinations.

Such killing has, however, been a "conspicuous fact" of most previous epochs and the number of notables killed during the period from 1800 to 1900 was at least equal to the numbers dispatched after 1901. Queen Victoria, like predecessors such as George III, experienced recurrent attacks by the deranged or Irish nationalists. Russian Tsars were murdered by radicals or by their entourage; being shot, stabbed or bombed was an occupational hazard for senior tsarist officials. In France there were a succession of attempts - sometimes successful and often killing numerous bystanders - against kings, emperors and presidents. Particular incidents are highlighted later in this note.

Action by the politically disaffected, ambitious or inspired echoed murders over previous centuries - for example ecclesiastical irritant Thomas a Becket in England, William the Silent in the Netherlands, the Duc de Guise and Kings Henry III and IV in France. The etymology of 'assassin' has indeed been traced to an Islamic sect, at the Crusades, whose members gained notoriety for success in eliminating Christian and Moslem alike.

Contrary to some claims, murder of leaders or of minor officials and intellectuals is thus not an unprecedented modern phenomenon. Killing as an exemplary 'propaganda of the deed' predates radio and mass circulation newspapers. As with suicide, its incidence appears to be affected by emulation, with outbreaks of copycat attempts against particular figures.

     grassy knolls

Historiography concerns itself with the dogs that did bark, understandably concentrating on attempts that met with success rather than those that failed and were thus relegated to a footnote or lost to memory. In retrospect it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of precursors of what online conspiracy theorists (and civil liberties analysts) tag the 'security state'. Security agencies have an institutional imperative to emphasise the dangers facing those they seek to protect and to attribute survival to their vigilance.

Depictions of assasination in popular culture - in particular in online fora - are sometimes premised on the notion that the 'lone gunman' (or the pervasive conspiracy) and technical ingenuity are peculiarly modern. That is not the case, with renaissance bids for example featuring poisoned bodices and gloves, a bid to kill Napoleon using a poisoned snuffbox and another bid employing a prototype machinegun.

As with today, many of the successful attempts were low tech (first knives, then pistols) rather than using state of the art equipment and often succeeded through happenstance and because the target was publicly accessible (eg held public receptions, paused to enter his home, mingled with the audience at the opera).

     ethical dilemmas

There are substantial continuities in debates about ethical and legal frameworks for assassination during wartime (or during a cold war) and for their prevention. Traditional tensions regarding principle and practice are evident in contemporary disagreement about incitements to violence, criticisms and calls for disobedience, and access to bomb-making information.

In Europe the Jesuits, for example, gained notoriety during the early Counter-Reformation for casuistry justifying breaking oaths of allegiance and committing murder. Others excused the deaths of passers-by as a regrettable but acceptable consequence of the need to kill tyrants or to remove the 'acceptable face' of despotism. More recently German officers agonised over the acceptability of eliminating the presiding mass murderer. US policymakers showed few qualms about what is now sometimes painted as the wartime assassination of Japanese military leader Isoroku Yamamoto.

Different schools of radicals in the age of steam used a railway metaphor, with assassination being characterised as a mechanism for speeding up (or slowing down) the engine of history ... or merely switching the train to a different track.

     all that is solid melts into air

A subsequent page of this note explores assassination as an online cultural phenomenon, with the net at times resembing a vast echo chamber resounding with misreporting, disinformation and collective paranoias. It is a realm where the enthusiast can play six degrees of separation (or stupidity) in connecting the 'assassination' of Marilyn Monroe with the grassy knoll, malign fantasies about the 'Elders of Zion', cow-tipping, alien abductions, the WTO, fluoridation and exploding cigars.

It is clear that in the past there were intense although isolated and short-term moral panics about assassination. In retrospect some of the longer-lived anxieties about groups such as the Jesuits, the Carbonari, the Illuminati, the Nihilists, the Black Hand and International Workers of the World now seem quaint, misplaced or simply incomprehensible by anyone not immersed in the mentalites - and media - of the particular period. Today's 5 November bonfire night was, in the England of 1605, an occasion of 'clear and present danger' narrowly - and providentially - averted.







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