The Philosophy of Assassinations
On Charlie Kirk, Luigi and Israel
I am not usually one to write about politics, but the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk has had a significant effect on me. I expect that over the next few weeks we will see many, many essays on here about politics, culture and the news cycle that pertain to this event, and I do not intend to enter that domain. It just isn’t what this publication is about. With that said, I think my energies may be well spent clarifying at least one of the terms that is bound to come up over the next few weeks: assassination.1
If you look at the news articles on this, you will see all kinds of terms being used (and the way the media uses these terms could be material for another good essay). Charlie Kirk was involved in a “fatal shooting.” he was “killed,” he was “murdered,” but he was also “assassinated.” I have seen this word many times, but it wasn’t until this event that I began thinking about it with any rigor. And the more I thought, the more I realized that the word “assassination” captures something essential about this killing which marks it as significant.2
The question is: what does it mean to be assassinated?
Towards a Definition: Murder and Assassination
I have been planning to write a special piece about the philosophy of definitions, because there is a lot of interesting stuff there which is not well known; but in light of present events, I am forced to proceed with the practical application of this theory first.
I guess what stirred me to write on this topic is that the death of Charlie Kirk feels different. I believe almost everyone can sense this. The nature of this change will reveal itself in time, but I had never realized before how assassinations differ so fundamentally from regular murders—even murders that have a political or ideological bent to them.3 I also realized just how many assassinations have been in the news as of late. We now seem to live—or we are fast approaching—the time of assassins.
I take it that an assassination is a special kind of act, one that can’t be reduced to something like murder. I also take it that we as people can “see” this difference. The concepts we employ are not just empty categories that are superimposed onto the world; rather, they often try to capture or articulate something which is felt prior to any conceptual analysis.4 I think it is very important, therefore, that we have a clear “view” before we begin.
If you look in the dictionary, assassination is defined as a special subset of murder. Here are some popular definitions:
The murder of a person (esp. a prominent public figure) in a planned attack, typically with a political or ideological motive, sometimes carried out by a hired or professional killer; a murderous attack of this kind. (OED)
The murder of someone famous or important. (Cambridge)
The premeditated act of killing someone suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person. (Dictionary.com)
While these may capture the way we use the word, they obfuscate the true nature of what makes assassination so important—and so philosophically interesting. Let us first, then, go over some of the essential features of assassination.
1. It is murder in the first-degree
It’s clear that all assassinations are de facto first-degree murders. There is no legal classification for assassination (that I am aware of), and should Kirk’s shooter be apprehended, which I hope he is, he will be charged with murder in the first-degree at the very least. But it would be a mistake to think that we can reduce assassinations to something so simple as “murder with political, ideological or financial motives.” This isn’t wrong, but it fails to convey the full meaning of what is intended.
2. It is a specific person, a target
Assassinations deal with a subset of murders: specifically, they deal with those where the target is a specific person. All that one needs to prove for first-degree murder is that the offender showed some form of premeditation (though there are special circumstances, like killing people during a robbery). If a crazy person decides to go kill the first guy who cuts him off in traffic, and plans out in meticulous detail how he will go about this, then it is murder in the first-degree. But this doesn’t necessitate that the victim in question is a specific person. With assassinations, however, the victim is always a particular individual—a target. Had the shooter intended to kill the first person he saw at Utah University, we would not be talking about an assassination.
3. The target is a leader or exemplar
It is weird to talk about the assassination of an unknown person. In all cases, the victim is also a leader of some kind. To a large extent, his status as a target is grounded in this fact. This could be the leadership of a gang, an army, a corporation, or even—as in the case of Charlie Kirk—a leader of ideas, whom we could designate as an “exemplar,” that is, as a person others look up to and model themselves after.
4. No pretense of legality
The final aspect of assassinations, as subsets of murders, is that there is not even a pretense of legality. This is obvious (it’s murder), but I wanted to distinguish assassinations from other forms of execution. Even when governments or intelligence agencies are involved, the killing is necessarily unsanctioned by law. In this respect, Che Guevara was not assassinated; he was executed (even though leftists across the world protested his death as an assassination). Similarly, the head of the Soviet NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria, who was tried in a “special session of the supreme court” and then promptly executed, was not assassinated. It’s something necessarily outside the (even corrupted) criminal justice system.5
Assassination as the Killing of a Person (Murder)
While all this is good to know, I think it fails to capture what is really interesting about assassinations. A murder is, in its most basic analysis, the killing of another person. So by that logic, all assassinations are a special subset murders—as we’ve already seen. But there is another aspect of assassinations which is seldom discussed, an essential one which, when revealed, is probably even more important than the actual killing itself. It has to do with the reasons why the person was killed; it has to do with all of us.
Supra-personal Aspects of Assassination
Anytime I use the prefix “supra-” I get worried because I think people will believe I am invoking some kind of weird spiritual entity. While the term is used that way—as in certain cases “supraindividual spirit"—it just designates that which is “above” in some respect. So, when I talk about the suprapersonal aspects of assassination, I am just referring to those things which are “above” or in some sense “beyond” the life of the individual person who is killed.
In some very real sense, there is an aspect of assassinations which is not about the killing of a person and is directed towards a larger structure, system or ethos.
Military assassinations—like those recently carried out by Israel—are designed to cripple effective military or logistical actions. Luigi Mangione’s assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, was directed towards the healthcare industry at large.6 Charlie Kirk’s assassination was, presumably, an attack not just on him but on the particular ethos he spent his life fighting for—his “American Values.”
The key difference here is not that one is killed for political or ideological or economic reasons, but that the killing itself is an attack on something larger than the individual victim. In some very real sense, assassinations have two targets: the person and the larger structure of which they are a part—be it political, economic, social, intellectual…
This is clearly distinct from killings with a particular motivation, which is what the dictionary definition describes. In 2020, a man by the name of Aaron Danielson was gunned down during a Trump rally. I don’t know the details of this specific case well, but at the time I remember it was thought that Mr. Danielson was killed because he was a Trump supporter—i.e., his political ideology was the reason he was killed.7 The details of the case need not concern us here. What is important is to distinguish between (1) someone who is murdered because he is a Trump supporter and (2) someone whose murder itself is an attack or statement against Trump supporters.
In the case of a regular murder, the person may be killed because they hold certain principles that the other finds dangerous or immoral, but in the case of assassinations, the real target of the act is the principles themselves. Aaron Danielson was killed because he believed certain things; Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he represented certain things.
Value-Delusions
I think the distinction between the personal and suprapersonal aspects of assassination goes a long way in explaining why certain people seem to be so morally blind when it comes to the obvious negative value of assassination. Although this may not count for cases involving military targets,8 the personal aspect in assassinations— the murder—is always unjust. I think this is actually an essential part of an assassination: it’s necessarily the killing of someone who does not deserve to die. Many people are against the death penalty as a matter of principle, but if it can be a just punishment, its imposition is reserved for the worst crimes. There is not even the attempt to say that such killings are just or that the person deserves to be executed.9
What tends to happen, however, is that people agree with the suprapersonal target of the killing. In fact, unlike the actual person who is killed, the suprapersonal one can be deserving of attack. Many people feel that the healthcare system in the United States is fatally flawed, and Luigi’s murder of Brian Thompson, insofar as it acts as a symbolic attack on this system, is perceived as a positive good. Even though we have yet to see how it will play out, it seems that many leftists are celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, too. This seems to be a particular kind of moral blindness where the individual cannot perceive the obvious injustice of the murder because they are so preoccupied with what the assassination means on a bigger level.
It is weird (and evil) to think that you can just gun down some CEO like a dog in the street because the healthcare system is corrupt.
And it is absolutely retarded (and evil) to think that somebody somehow “deserves” to die because they publicly espouse values that you dislike.
There are people out there who are genuinely bloodthirsty lunatics, but I think it is important to identify this rather widespread value-delusion. In cases of assassination, people often fail to perceive the badness of the murder when the suprapersonal target is something they are against. It’s as though the value of the person is eclipsed by the larger structure of which they are part. One hopes this is the case: it would be far better if these people were morally blind rather than overtly murderous.
And this effect has a corollary going the other direction as well. Because the target of an assassination is something bigger than the individual who is murdered, it is felt more deeply than regular killings. It is not that this person was killed: they were killed in an attack on something larger than themselves, and as such, all people who are part of that thing feel threatened.10
The Opposing Force
If it makes sense to conceptualize an assassination as both a species of murder and an attack on a larger structure of some kind, then it also makes sense to distinguish the physical assassin from the group, system or “force” on whose behalf he acts. This too seems like an essential part of assassinations, at least once they crystallize into concrete narratives.11
The point is that while we recognize that the assassin himself is responsible, there is always a search for the causa causans: the final link in the chain of causation.
This ought not be terribly controversial. In military assassinations, there is the command structure of the opposing country. In the case of Luigi Mangione, there is a group of Americans, “the people,” who are supposedly being oppressed by the medical establishment and who deserve justice. In Kirk’s case, we do not know—though one suspects that we will hear a great deal about how he was killed by “the left” over the coming weeks.
The underlying idea is that there is an entity or “force” which is somehow responsible for the killing and which is opposed to the suprapersonal structure that the assassinated person was a part of. We need not posit any spooky entities here, and I do not want to get into social ontology. But from a purely descriptive standpoint, this is just how people think about these things.
To summarize: to say that someone has been “assassinated” means that a certain kind of murder has taken place and that this murder constitutes an attack against some broader social, political or economic structure (even an ethos, which is a structure of values).
The Meaning of Kirk’s Assassination
The ultimate meaning of Kirk’s death has yet to be decided in full. If what I’ve suggested here is true, then it will be grounded not just in the facts of the event or even in the specific motives of the killer: it has a suprapersonal character, too.
Some things are certain, however. Many seem to feel that his assassination was an attack on the fundamental values of the American Republic. And these principles were hardly radical: free speech, open debate, family values—normal stuff that would have been a given 20 years ago. In a sense, it was directed against a majority of the American people who hold such values, which is why so many are freaking out about it.12
These are not my views; this is just how people on the right are reacting. Matt Walsh, a milktoast conservative if ever there was, expressed it like this:
They think they can kill the movement by killing us… You can kill a man, you can shoot him in the neck on stage, you can spill his blood. But you cannot kill a cause, especially when that cause is nothing other than love of god, love of country, love of family—when that cause is truth. You can’t kill the truth.13
It’s not just about Charlie Kirk; it’s about the whole conservative movement and the “truth” itself.
With this rhetoric, we are already on the path to martyrdom, which is a topic that is too big to cover here. The point is that because Kirk was a symbol of a particular American ethos and because his death is perceived as a direct attack on that ethos, all people who hold his principles feel threatened to some degree. This case is especially bad because the principles in question are so basic. In effect, some of them form the foundation of civil society. I am not talking about his conservatism but about his deeper commitments to open dialogue and the free exchange of ideas—what he was famous for. I take it that this is why many of Kirk’s harshest critics (Fuentes comes to mind) seem so shaken by his death.
One thing to be on the lookout for over the coming weeks is to see which force is blamed for Kirk’s assassination. If I’m correct, then the kind of principles that will be perceived as being under threat are already established. What remains to be seen is who or what is responsible for his death.
There are a few options. It could be the “radical left,” Israel, Iran, the deep state—who knows? The important thing is that assassinations should not be merely understood as the interaction between two people, as a random act of killing. The ethos that is under attack is presumably under attack by something, and this has yet to be decided.
Put simply: we seem to already know what Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an attack on, but as of yet there is no definitive answer as to what is ultimately responsible for the attack.
While his assassination may be tragic in the sense that it marks the untimely death of an ambitious and influential young man, who by many accounts was honourable and virtuous, it also has a foreboding character because we do not know the extent of the damage to the culture. The real meaning of assassinations can only be known retrospectively. At the moment, it seems that Kirk’s death is catalyzing the right, emboldening them and perhaps stirring some out of their stupor of complacency. But one doesn’t know. We will have to wait and see what changes this brings about.
Regardless, one thing seems certain and it was expressed by Kirk in an eerily prescient tweet he posted a few days before his demise:
I looked briefly through the literature, but all of the stuff written about assassination is about just war theory and whether it is ethical to assassinate people abroad. There are a few pieces attempting to define the term, but all of these are written within a paradigm that is orthogonal to what I am doing here. This essay is essentially the beginning of a “phenomenology of assassination.”
There is a sense of the word that is not relevant for our purposes. In this case, the term simply means something like “killed by an assassin.” When a vindictive woman hires a hitman to kill her ex-husband, we say that he was assassinated. But this is really just a murder performed by a professional killer. The idea of “character assassination” is irrelevant, too.
The recent death of Iryna Zarutska also feels different in some way, but I will not say any more about that here. I take it that the important aspects of this event have more to do with the media’s reaction, or lack thereof, than it does with the actual content of her murder.
I recognize that this is controversial, but I will not argue for the idea here.
There may be some weird exceptions to this. Years ago I was in Nepal, and a friend of mine told me a story of how a local gangster was just gunned down by police. Apparently, they didn’t even try to arrest him; they just arrived at a bar and killed him in cold blood. The police then celebrated this proudly in the papers. Perhaps you could call this an assassination, albeit one of a very weird sort. I understand why the country is presently undergoing some changes.
And to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that he even used UnitedHealthcare himself—they just happen to be the biggest company in that field.
I don’t know the details of this case, and it doesn’t matter. I am using this to illustrate a philosophical distinction.
Here there is a lot of literature. I am also reminded of some ancient Teutonic laws where the killing of another person was not conceived of as “murder” because the victims were armed and expected to defend themselves from attacks, which were also expected to come. In war it seems that assassination might just be “part of the game.”
Interestingly enough, I think there is a case to be made that healthcare CEOs could be put to death. I have a friend who is old-money Italian, and he once explained to me how the death penalty ought to be reserved only for politicians and applied liberally. He was an elitist who thought European nobles should rule the world. The thinking goes that, if you take on a leadership role within the community, then the consequences for unscrupulous behaviour are more severe. This means that even small crimes are grounds for execution. It’s a weird view that I haven’t seen elsewhere, and one could argue—though none of the Mangione supporters do—that running a healthcare company involves a similar degree of responsibility and that any criminal (or even unethical) behaviour, like the false denial of claims, is sufficiently egregious to warrant death.
We saw this in the Mangione case when CEOs were losing their shit. The thinking went that everyone might start killing CEOs. Similarly, right-wing commentators are, perhaps rightly, worried because they feel in danger, too.
There are weird cases where there are no such forces. I am thinking of the attempted assassination of Ronald Regan by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981, where the would-be assassin thought killing the president would impress Jodie Foster, whom he became infatuated with after watching Taxi Driver—a film which deals with assassination. Instances such as these, while perhaps colloquially referred to as “assassinations” or “assassination attempts,” are really something slightly different. They’re high-profile murders perpetrated by psychotics and schizophrenics, not assassinations in the sense we are talking about. Mark David Chapman’s killing of John Lennon also comes to mind, and it is worth noting that Lennon’s Wikipedia page refers to it as a “murder,” not an “assassination.”
I should note that it is not terribly important whether the killing was ideologically motivated at this point. Many people on the right already perceive it as such, and certain contingents of the left seem to be celebrating the event as a victory for their cause or as a kind of happy accident that befell someone who “deserved it.” Even if this particular killing were the work of some schizophrenic, the broader cultural meaning seems to have already been fixed by the political climate.
Video source:
Great article, really clarifies my thinking about this.